My first Top Ten of 2008 releases, even if half are reissues.
Born in Mississippi, raised in St. Louis, and long based in Chicago, Cohran was a member of the Sun Ra Arkestra until Ra moved to New York in 1961. In 1965, Cohran was one of the four co-founders of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). The Artistic Heritage Ensemble, with its integration of jazz, African music, and soul, was a big influence on Earth, Wind & Fire (some EWF members were in the AHE). These 1967-68 recordings find Cohran playing cornet, an amplified thumb piano he dubbed the Frankiphone, zither, and violin uke. “Unity,” the most anthologized track here, is also heard in a bonus concert version with a far-out Pete Cosey guitar solo.
If this 1980 album sounds quite current, well, that’s how much it has influenced the indie scene. Jittery nerd-rock with energy to burn, it’s a singular mix of Velvet Underground guitar jangle-and-thrum/Lou Reed deadpan vocals (and a touch of edgy psychedelic production) with motorik beats adapted from Krautrock. Pretty moments always give way to breathless exuberance and a post-punk edginess (American style, so less angular). “Fa-Ce-La” is the classic track, with the hyper cover of the Beatles’ “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey” also memorable.
UPDATE: I put Water as the label because there’s been a release listed for this that was pushed back to 4/22. But BT’s own Matthew Berlyant just emailed me a link to an article saying the Water reissue is unauthorized and was withdrawn, but that we can instead look forward to an authorized reissue to come from Feelies member Glenn Mercer’s label Bar/None, which would be great because that offers the possibility (never the case with Water reissues) that we could get bonus tracks.
Nigeria Special: Modern Highlife, Afro-Sounds & Nigerian Blues 1970-76 (Soundwave)
From the people who brought us the great Ghana Soundz series comes a two-disc, 26-artist compilation. It’s certainly tightly focused, yet there’s still a wide variety of sounds and styles, from the Tony Benson Sextet’s loungey (yet hard-grooving) organ-powered jazz to prime highlife from Celestine Ukwu & His Philosophers National and the Harbours Band, from ex-Fela sidemen The Don Isaac Ezekial Combination to various hybrids incorporating rock, soul, funk, psychedelia, and blues into Nigerian styles old and new, all rhythmically infectious.
Do not buy this expecting it to sound like Radiohead just because Greenwood’s their genius guitarist. And I don’t mean that in a Thom Yorke album kinda way, either – this is an orchestral soundtrack heavily influenced by several major 20th century composers. So buy it expecting it to sound like Krysztof Penderecki and Olivier Messiaen. Or buy it expecting it to sound like the highly accomplished work of a musical talent who refuses to be hemmed in by genre boundaries and expectations. Or buy it because you really, really liked the string arrangement on Radiohead’s “How to Disappear Completely” and want to hear Greenwood go way past that into musical areas that will alternately give you sweet blissful dreams (that’s the Messiaen influence) and sweat-drenched-wake-up-screaming nightmares (Penderecki’s influence). Wow.
Reissuing a relatively obscure 1977 album originally released by Ra on his Saturn label, this collection of mostly jazz standards is not the place to start learning about Sun Ra, but will be fascinating to fans for several reasons. A bassless septet is used (expanded to an octet with the addition of bass on the title track), leaving plenty of solo space for tenor saxophonist John Gilmore, who even achieves an original take on “My Favorite Things.” A few of the arrangements are charming but lack spark, but the sparks certainly fly on most of them. The bonus tracks, worth the price of the disc all by themselves, are an untitled Ra original from the ‘77 session and two 1973 rehearsals of “I’ll Get By,” trios with Ra’s pianism and great bassist Ronnie Boykins the constants, one take featuring Gilmore and the other a tender reading with his place taken by trumpeter Ahk Tal Ebah.
Reid recorded this album in Senegal with local musicians, but there’s lots of stylistic variety. The opening track is a low-key introduction, acoustic and drumless, but after that it’s more what we expect from Reid, definitely funkier than his duo recordings with Keiran Hebden (Four Tet). Often the tracks gradually build in density, with Reid’s beats becoming more intricate and ornate as the intensity grows. The title track has strong African flavors but also odd synth burblings that keep it from being retro. “Jiggy Jiggy” is nine minutes of hard-driving Latin funk, with Reid laying down a powerful, subtly varied groove. “Dabronxxar” is spacey fusion jazz featuring trumpet, electric piano riffing, and, again, grooving juggernaut Reid; Hebden contributes some freaky electronics. Fat organ chords set the modal tone on “Big G’s Family,” which sports Santana-esque Latin-rock timbres complete with coruscating guitar. We’re back in spacey fusion jazz territory again on “Don’t Look Back,” but with a harder edge and more probing guitar. This disc is a must for anyone into adventurous soul-jazz grooves.
If you like voices soaked in whisky and smoke and lyrics hatched in darkness by tortured souls, this team-up of Mark Lanegan and Greg Dulli will be your favorite album of the year. They collaborate with an array of indie-rock fellow spirits including Joseph Arthur, Lanegan’s Queens of the Stone Age bandmate Troy Van Leeuwen, violinist Petra Haden, even (oddly) Brit diva Martina Topley-Bird. The only track Lanegan and Dulli aren’t both on is “I Was in Love with You,” which with its keyboard emphasis and strings suggests a grunge ELO, or stoned Radiohead. Throughout the disc, every sonic nook and cranny is filled with instruments, the dense production amplifying the sense of foreboding that courses through every track.
Consider this a sort of musical game of telephone: a mid-’00s band looking back at the early ‘90s bands that were extrapolating from mid-’70s forebears, with new accretions altering the sound while retaining its essence. Every 15 years or so, a new generation of kids weaned on their parents’ album collections comes to a realization of one of the great rock verities: a scruffy, skuzzy, scrabbling, shambolic two-guitar sound is inherently compelling and perfectly complements the dark thoughts of troubled youth. That each generation also embraces scruffy, skuzzy facial hair must not be coincidental; that each generation’s recording quality gets fuzzier could be indie signifying, or just smaller recording budgets as the moves further underground. This particular quartet has added speed to its repertoire since its debut album, so there are some uptempo changes of pace amid the many shuffling midtempo rambles. Anyone who likes Songs: Ohia/Magnolia Electric Company/Jason Molina will dig this disc.
It took four years, but finally Nostalgialator is released in the U.S. (it came out in Europe in 2004 on !K7). Since he made this album, he’s had several collaborations with jazz pianist Vijay Iyer, so this serves as a reminder of just how original his production is even when he’s the only artist on the album. Ladd covers way more musical ground than most hip-hop artists; there’s even a low-key, gruffly sung adaptation of the folk song “Sail Away Ladies” closing the disc. There’s a lot of political commentary, but Ladd’s wordplay is so witty, and his poetic vision so surreal, that he never sounds preachy.
Wayfaring Strangers: Guitar Soli (Numero)
The prolific compilers at Numero deliver another gem. As usual for Numero, the picks avoid the obvious: no John Fahey, no Sandy Bull, no Robbie Basho, etc. among these 1966-81 tracks. The best-known of the 14 artists here is Richard Crandell. Styles vary from pretty acoustic finger-picking to shadowed arpeggiations to the is-that-really-a-guitar? “Raga in D” by Ted Lucas and jangling slide on “The Delta Freeze” by Jim Ohlschmidt and “Quidate Quierda” by Tom Smith. All fans of acoustic guitar will want this disc.
